Here is a video clip of Steve Balmer from 18 months ago. He does 2 things ( other than looking really defensive). He laughs at the iPhone declaring no one in business would want it. He explains that WinMobile’s huge sales basically doom the iPhone to niche status. The problem? iPhone just unseated WinMo in… Continue reading →

This is one of the more interesting takes on the music industry I have seen in print, from Topspin CEO Ian Rogers. It's a reminder that just because the old guard loses, that doesn't mean there is an industry in duress. Insert whatever industry you want into this paradigm. The US auto industry, typesetters, buggy… Continue reading →

Remember when your Pets.com stock raced down from $60 to $2 and you didn’t sell? That was a bad idea. You regret that, because it was wildly overvalued even at $2 and deep down you knew better. But the Fallacy of Sunk Costs consumed you, and you were determined to make something of your investment…. Continue reading →

This is a truly astonishing article. It chronicles the very limited, rogue trial by a tiny fraction of hospitals and doctors to not lie by default when they make a mistake. Yep, they are, against most advice and some twisted conventional wisdom, going to try the option of apologizing for mistakes and doing their best… Continue reading →

The final nail is in the municipal WiFi coffin. It’s fitting that it is also in its birthplace. If only someone would have predicted this…

"We have got to get them to understand that this is important." Someone said this in a managers meeting once, not too long ago. Well, actually, we had all said it at one point in time over the previous 14 months. About how we – The Managers – needed the get them – The Employees,… Continue reading →

For those of you who are really in the know about Ripple, you know that I laid off three members of my management team about five weeks ago. Which is to say – almost all of my management team. Why? Why would I let three people of their caliber get away? All three – passionate,… Continue reading →

This professor, Randy Pausch, is the professor I always imagined all professors would be like when I got to college. Brilliant, interested, able to bring out the best in me. Inspiring. Better than me. Approachable. The reality is that very few professors are actually like this. This is his last lecture as a professor. It… Continue reading →

If you use one of those phone trees that makes us "talk" out the tree options. HATE you. Look, a voice tree is annoying enough, but when you make me speak out loud like an idiot ("one"…"four"… "Cleveland"… "CLEVELAND!"… "no"…."NO"…) in public, I am consumed with rage before I ever speak to anyone. This is… Continue reading →

The AP reports that municipal WiFi is going nowhere – fast. "They are the monorails of this decade: the wrong technology, totally overpromised and completely undelivered," said Anthony Townsend, research director at the Institute For The Future, a think tank. Just think! Someone who’s in a think-tank agrees with me. Me! I’ll go out on… Continue reading →

This is just bad. Bad, bad, bad. You can’t be a coffee shop and a music label at the same time. Starbucks is going down two roads, and it will ultimately cost them. If Howard Schultz is serious about bringing the coffee shop experience back to Starbucks, it’s going to cost a lot of time,… Continue reading →

The word "Comcastic(tm)" has taken on a life of its own in my world. Many of my friends share the sentiment with me, but until now we didn’t have a true definition. Sure, we all know things that ARE Comcastic (Comcast, big airlines, GM, tow truck drivers, etc.), but for a word to really take… Continue reading →

  "Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction."–Albert Einstein Ummm….yup. As you make your product, service, religion, political platform, or lifestyle more robust, meaningful, complete, rich, or detailed you gotta remember one… Continue reading →

You can only do one thing. Stand for one thing. Be remembered for one thing. God that’s hard. I am a disciple of Al Reis and Jack Trout’s Positioning. A believer that you can only be one thing in people’s mind. But it is just so hard to execute. There are so MANY opportunities. One… Continue reading →

No one is going to steal your idea. And if they are, an NDA isn’t going to stop them. More than likely your idea will fade away, even from you, because you can’t get the execution down. This calculator is about the best illustration I’ve ever seen. AWFUL IDEA = -1 WEAK IDEA = 1… Continue reading →

Well readers, I got my first journalistic mention! Researching Really Bad Powerpoint, a blog at The Houston Chronicle mentions "Here’s The Thing" as if it were a real blog… But this is priceless: A mock PowerPoint presentation of The Gettysburg Address. It is so very, very perfect. I think if the Whitehouse had used PowerPoint… Continue reading →

Rob Haag has worked at Ripple for seven years. I have known Rob and his wife Julie for ten. And I have always known that they were extraordinary people. But a larger calling is a powerful thing. Rob and Julie’s first born son, Michael, was born without a fully developed hand. They were sad. And… Continue reading →

Atlanta Ranks #1 “Most Wired City” Do they mention Ripple in the article? Of course not. Did we play a pivotal role in this ranking? With 80 free hotspots and 27,000 subscribers in Atlanta…I think so. Forbes ranks America’s Most Wired (and wireless) Cities

No longer does Really Bad PowerPoint kill only brain cells and patience. Now it kills US soldiers. I have resisted commenting on Really Bad PowerPoint here because so many others do it better. Seth Godin coined the phrase, and Garr Reynolds has built an entire career on defeating it. But now it has reared it’s… Continue reading →

This is Intel investing a billion dollars in a company that makes gear for WiMax. That’s in addition to the billions they are spending internally on WiMax. And since Intel puts the chipsets in virtually every laptop made, it’s a pretty safe guess that what Intel invests in is what you and I will be… Continue reading →

There was an interesting post this morning from Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink. In it he chronicles the way the New York Times (the New York Times, not the Post) sensationalizes what it calls the "sharp" rise in drug prices. But citing an AARP study, it only mentions name brand drugs!… Continue reading →

I doubt it. SanDisk wants to attract rebels and iconoclasts to it’s MP3 player. So it’s going after Apple by trying to be Apple. Won’t work. Oh sure, the facts are there. Apple dominates this market with something like 80% of MP3 player sales. So they are the establishment, right? SanDisk would be the cool… Continue reading →

Here’s a classic rookie mistake with email: Using it for important communications with people you don’t know intimately. I made that mistake on Tuesday and it cost Ripple dearly. It was also a lesson in practicing what you preach. I tell my coworkers regularly "If what you want to say could be misconstrued – if… Continue reading →

Or are you building a monument to yourself? 9 years ago I set out to build a company that could stand on it’s own; a company that didn’t necessarily depend on me personally. I might have been too successful 🙂 I just spent 10 days out of the country with half of my management team…. Continue reading →

I probably should have written about this a long time ago – just so I could be on the record when I say "I told you so." If you know me, you’ve heard me say it before. If you don’t, I’ll say it now: Municipal WiFi is going to be a nightmare. What??? No! It’s… Continue reading →

Seth Godin writes about process and why smart people are often resistant to creating processes. In short, he concludes that it is because it threatens your reliance on intuition. I think that’s a pretty astute observation, and certainly one of the main reasons that intuitive people often have very little process in their lives and… Continue reading →

I’m not going to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Just so you know. Now, I’m not a venture capitalist, and Ripple is not an incubator. But I get my share of calls with people who would like to bounce ideas off of me. Ideas for products, businesses and the like. "Cool," I say. "Let’s hear… Continue reading →

So I learned something last night that I suppose I already knew. But it still made an impression. There are 2 ways to do something. Kick-ass or every other way. And the thing is, kicking ass makes you feel like you matter. Kicking ass equals success. Kick-ass counts. So we know this. It seems trivial…. Continue reading →

First impressions count. A lot. Here’s the thing: When we put out a call for a position we get about 200 resumes for one position. So our job is to get through those resumes and weed out as many as we can. We want about the top 20. Now, there are a lot of things… Continue reading →